BALANCING THE ASSUMPTIONS OF CAUSAL INFERENCE AND NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Drawing conclusions about real-world relationships of cause and effect from data collected without randomization requires making assumptions about the true processes that generate the data we observe. Causal inference typically considers low-dimensional data such as categorical or numerical fields in structured medical records. Yet a restriction to such data excludes natural language texts -- including social media posts or clinical free-text notes -- that can provide a powerful perspective into many aspects of our lives. This thesis explores whether the simplifying assumptions we make in order to model human language and behavior can support the causal conclusions that are necessary to inform decisions in healthcare or public policy. An analysis of millions of documents must rely on automated methods from machine learning and natural language processing, yet trust is essential in many clinical or policy applications. We need to develop causal methods that can reflect the uncertainty of imperfect predictive models to inform robust decision-making. We explore several areas of research in pursuit of these goals. We propose a measurement error approach for incorporating text classifiers into causal analyses and demonstrate the assumption on which it relies. We introduce a framework for generating synthetic text datasets on which causal inference methods can be evaluated, and use it to demonstrate that many existing approaches make assumptions that are likely violated. We then propose a proxy model methodology that provides explanations for uninterpretable black-box models, and close by incorporating it into our measurement error approach to explore the assumptions necessary for an analysis of gender and toxicity on Twitter

Temas de actualidad en salud pública

La salud pública es una disciplina importante para la salud en el mundo. Se define como la ciencia y el arte de prevenir las enfermedades, prolongar la vida y promover la salud a través de los esfuerzos organizados y decisiones con conocimiento de la sociedad, las organizaciones (públicas y privadas), las comunidades y los individuos, esta disciplina se ha renovado con la incorporación de múltiples actores, profesiones, áreas de conocimiento, además de ser afectados y promovido por múltiples tecnologías, en particular los de información. Como un campo cambiante del conocimiento, la salud pública requiere la información basada en la evidencia y actualizaciones regulares, más aún en el contexto de un mundo en transición epidemiológica. "Temas actuales en la salud pública", presenta información actualizada sobre varios temas relacionados con las áreas reales de interés en esta ciencia médica creciente y emocionante, con la concepción y la filosofía que estamos trabajando para mejorar la salud de la población, en lugar que el tratamiento de las enfermedades de los pacientes individuales, la toma de decisiones sobre el cuidado de la salud colectiva que se basan en la mejor evidencia disponible, actualizada, válida y pertinente, y, finalmente, en el contexto de los recursos disponibles. La salud pública debe ser una ciencia compleja, ayudando en las decisiones, acciones y cambios en la salud del mundo. En una sociedad globalizada esto se hizo hincapié no sólo en una nación en particular, sino en todo el mundo.Public health is a major health discipline in the world. Defined as the science and art of preventing diseases, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of the society, organizations (public and private), communities and individuals, this discipline has been renewed by the incorporation of multiple actors, professions, knowledge areas, as well as being impacted and promoted by multiple technologies, particularly information ones. As a changing field of knowledge, public health requires evidence-based information and regular updates, even more in the context of a world in epidemiological transition. Health impacts of climate change are currently in the quest of the Millennium Development Goals, and most of them are related to the activities of public health. “Current Topics in Public Health” presents updated information on multiple topics related to actual areas of interest in this growing and exciting medical science, with the conception and philosophy that we are working to improve the health of the population, rather than treating diseases of individual patients; taking decisions about collective health care that are based on the best available, current, valid and relevant evidence; and finally within the context of available resources. Public health should be a complex science helping in the decision, actions and changes in the health of the world. In a globalized society this is emphasized not just in a particular nation but in the whole world